Democrats ignore their own failures to talk about Republicans and ‘systemic racism’ instead
Zachary Faria
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Democrats have predictably turned the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee, into a referendum on Republicans and on the country in the form of systemic racism. After all, better to talk about that than about the fact that this is yet another failure of local and national Democratic politicians.
The liberal punditry industry is awash with cries of “systemic racism” to explain why Nichols, who is black, was beaten to death by five police officers. Of course, it does not matter that all five officers are also black. To them, the five were puppets of institutional white supremacy, these pundits and activists would have you believe, as are any black people who ever harm other black people.
MEMPHIS POLICE DISSOLVE STREET CRIMES UNIT WHOSE OFFICERS BEAT TYRE NICHOLS
Unmentioned in these screeds and the renewed push to defund police departments is that Democrats have run Memphis for at least the last 31 years. As is always the case, Democrats do not want to talk about the death of a black man at the hands of police in a city they have had hegemonic control of for decades. After the police killing of George Floyd, Democrats similarly sought to avoid the fact that they have controlled Minneapolis since 1978. This is nothing new.
But there is a new element at play. MSNBC’s Paul Butler claimed that congressional Republicans had stood in the way of legislation that would have (somehow) prevented five black police officers from beating a man to death. A bit less outrageously, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC) should try and “revive” police reform efforts as if the issue is more of a bipartisan failure.
But this failure is not bipartisan. There should be no need for Scott to “revive” police reform negotiations because he offered a police reform bill in the summer of 2020 after the death of Floyd. Democrats, not Republicans, blocked the bill, deciding that they would rather have no police reform bill than a bill they thought didn’t go far enough. In reality, Democrats wanted to use the bill as a political talking point heading into the 2020 elections.
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Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Republicans were “trying to get away” with murdering George Floyd — but oh, don’t worry, surely those negotiations will pan out this time.
The fact is that the death of Nichols has about as little to do with Republicans as anything that happened in America that day. It also has nothing to do with “systemic” racism. To the extent that there is any blame to be assigned outside of the five officers who actually assaulted Nichols, it would be to the Democrats who have run the city for decades and, to a lesser extent, the congressional Democrats who used police reform as a political tool the last time it was brought up for debate.